New 13-inch MacBook Pro just as hard to repair as its big brother

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Brace yourselves, the new 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display has been cracked open and its inner workings laid bare. As you’ve probably guessed, Apple’s been up to its usual design shenanigans.

Those lovely Apple pentalobe screws keep the 13-incher sealed shut, though they’re not nearly as abundant as the screws in the Surface Pro 2. Immediately after popping the cover off, iFixit noticed that accursed soldered-on RAM.

If you’re going to buy the new 13-inch MacBook Pro, make sure you buy a model with the maximum RAM you think you might need. The 4GB model is going to be stuck at 4GB forever, so you’d do well to save up the extra $200 for 8GB and a 256GB SSD if you plan on keeping your MacBook Pro for several years.

When Apple sent those ‘We’ve got a lot left to cover” invites, they must have been dropping a hint about the trackpads in their new MacBook Pros. They’re now sandwiched beneath the 71.8wHr battery pack, and those aren’t coming out without a fight. Should your trackpad ever quit working, it’s going to take a whole lot of jabbing, prying, and knuckle-scraping to swap it out.

It wasn’t all bad news for iFixit, however. Apple does at least use a standard mini-PCIe SSD in the 13-inch MacBook Pro. And, interestingly enough, the 13-inch model doesn’t use a Samsung SSD. The 15-inch does, so Apple obviously doesn’t have issues going to Samsung for certain important parts in its highest-end machines.

The less expensive 13 appears to be totally Samsung-free. About the only other good news is that the speakers were fairly easy to pop out. That wasn’t nearly enough to move the needle, of course, and iFixit awarded the 2013 MacBook Pro 13-inch with Retina display yet another 1/10.

Apple is scoring points for consistency. It’s just too bad that it’s for making products that are consistently hard to repair.